Chelsea Handler - Early Life

Early Life

Handler grew up in the suburban town of Livingston, New Jersey. The youngest of six children, she was raised in Reform Judaism by her Jewish father, Seymour, and her Mormon mother, Rita. Her mother was German and came to the United States in 1958. Handler has said that while growing up, she felt like an outsider, and told a reporter, "We lived in this nice Jewish neighborhood...Everyone had Mercedes and Jaguars, and I was going to school in a Pinto." Despite this, her family had a summer house on Martha's Vineyard. In a June 2011 episode of her show, she and author James Van Praagh discussed the death of her brother, Chet, when she was ten years old. Handler had an abortion at age 16, which she discussed during an interview in 2011. At age 19, she moved from New Jersey to Los Angeles, California to pursue an acting career, and two years later, decided to become a stand-up comic after telling her story about a DUI to a class of other offenders, who found it funny.